Good morning, and thank you for the invitation to provide evidence on our report on the Scottish Government’s young carer grant regulations. I am giving evidence today on behalf of the whole of the Scottish Commission on Social Security.
This is our first report, so I hope that it will be helpful to make some broader points about SCOSS—as we have come to be known—before I highlight key issues from our report. Above all, I stress that we are an independent body; we are independent of the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament and the organisations that each of us works for in our day jobs.
We want to ensure that our work adds value and contributes to the development of a Scottish social security system that is effective at meeting people’s needs. Therefore, we would welcome the committee’s feedback on the usefulness—or otherwise—of our report, which was partly designed to inform the committee’s consideration of the draft regulations. I appreciate that the committee might wish to do that informally or offline, but we would welcome any views that you have on the report and our approach to it.
SCOSS was created in response to Parliament’s concerns that were expressed during the passage of the Social Security (Scotland) Bill, about the need for independent scrutiny of the Scottish Government’s social security proposals. Our new role will not, of course, usurp the committee’s expert scrutiny role. SCOSS is a very new body; we officially opened for business in February this year. The board has four members, including me, as chair. Members work for a limited number of days—therefore, we need to manage our time carefully.
SCOSS has a statutory role in providing independent expert advice as part of super-affirmative scrutiny of draft Scottish social security regulations. The Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 specifies the benefits on which we are to report. In addition to reporting on draft regulations, the 2018 act defines our other two roles, which are reporting from time to time on the extent to which expectations in the social security charter are being met and making recommendations for improvements, and providing reports that are requested by Scottish ministers or the Scottish Parliament on any matter that is relevant to social security. We have been considering how we can best perform those duties and will be happy to discuss that with the committee at a later date.
I will return to the agenda for today’s meeting. We want to ensure that all our reports on draft regulations are consistent, rigorous and comprehensive. We have devised a draft scrutiny framework that sets out the questions that we will ask when considering regulations and drafting reports. However, that does not mean that all our reports will address every issue that is highlighted in the framework; our approach might depend on exactly what the regulations cover, or we might want to focus on one or two key points.
The scrutiny framework reflects the statutory requirement that SCOSS must, in considering draft regulations, have regard to the principles in the 2018 act and in international human rights instruments. We would welcome the committee’s initial views on the scrutiny framework, which is annexed to our report.
I will turn to the specifics of the young carer grant report. We received the initial draft regulations on 30 April and published our report on 20 May. The cabinet secretary provided a response on 21 June, when the revised draft instrument was also laid. The grant provides new support to 16 to 18-year-old carers, who cannot always access the opportunities that many young people can access. We welcome the grant as a progressive new form of financial support that is consistent both with the social security principles and with human rights obligations.
We are pleased that most of our recommendations were accepted by the cabinet secretary, and we consider that the draft regulations are in better shape as a result.
Our report recommended further work in some areas of policy analysis and development, and in aspects of the regulations; in particular, we recommended that the definition of “care” and the qualifying period be revisited.
We also made a number of recommendations about issues to monitor. We might be able to consider further some of those points under our separate statutory duty to report on whether the expectations in the social security charter are being met. If so, we want to avoid duplicating any work that the committee intends to undertake.
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We appreciate that members might be interested in exploring those recommendations to which the Scottish Government did not agree. We are happy to explain why we made a particular recommendation, or to comment on further issues that the committee might wish to discuss with the Cabinet Secretary for Social Security and Older People. However, we do not intend to issue formal responses to cabinet secretary and Government responses. If we feel that there is a showstopper—something that is of real significance—our role is to put that in our scrutiny report. We suggest that it is the role of the committee to come to a view about whether the Government’s responses are adequate; otherwise, we will begin to blur the line between where our role stops and where the committee’s starts. Our role is about independent analysis.
Given that the report is our first, drafting it was a significant learning process for SCOSS members. Some of the recommendations were really requests for more information, because we came in halfway through the process. We expect that future reports, for which we will be involved right from the outset, will be more streamlined. We are also very keen to consider other suggestions for improving our scrutiny in order to best meet the committee’s needs.
We are very happy to take questions. Thank you.